


wheat.

by allonsysouffle



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, a hefty serving of ptsd, ryan is trans and mentally ill and things turn out okay, some talk about dicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5700340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsysouffle/pseuds/allonsysouffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re in the middle of a heist, bullets raining, grenades lighting new paths through the grime of Los Santos, and Ryan finds himself breaking apart- breaking away, from everything.</p>
<p>There’s a memory that won’t let go of his hair.</p>
<p><i>Bang.</i> One of his bullets finds its home in the chest of a police officer. <i>Bang</i>, and suddenly he’s out in the middle of a field in Georgia on the fourth of July, wind whistling, fireworks cracking like whips in the stretching summer sky.</p>
<p>The world stops. It’s all so familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wheat.

**Author's Note:**

> there is not enough trans fic in this fandom so i had to help out with that  
> hope u enjoy my friends  
> (u can find me on tumblr at raymichael and twitter at saltwaterrayne!)  
> <3 -E

It starts in Geoff’s living room, in the empty space after a bad joke.

Jack is talking about their next heist. “I don’t know much. Geoff is being secretive as hell- you know how he gets- but he says it’ll be tough as shit.”

Ryan grins. “Well, it can’t be that bad. I mean, I _am_ the Vagabond-”

“Vagabond, more like _vag_ -abond,” Ray deadpans with a soft _g_. “You know. Like vagina. Ha ha. Comedy.”

“Yeah, having a vagina’s just so demeaning,” Jack scolds, but she’s holding back a laugh herself.

Ryan feels himself freeze up, and forces himself to breathe. _In-out. It wasn't aimed at you._

He doesn’t respond. 

Geoff bursts in with the heist plans, Michael and Gavin following close behind, and the conversation is forgotten in the whirl and the antics. Ryan forgets about the joke and concentrates on the job.

But Jack stops Ray while everyone is emptying out of the room.

“Um,” she says quietly. “I would advise you to lay off the jokes around Ryan.”

“Huh?” Ray frowns. “Ryan? The dude’s a dork. Wasn’t he in a heated debate with Michael about Digimon yesterday?”

She looks at him strangely, a worried sort of glint in her eye. “You should be careful, Ray. He- he can get dangerous, you know?”

“We’re all dangerous,” Ray says, unfazed. “We’re criminals, Jack. It’s in the job description.” He moves to leave, grabbing the door knob. “I can handle him. And he can handle a joke, too.”

“ _Ray_ -” she calls, but he’s already gone. 

* * *

 

“Ryan,” Jack says, low and soft and trying her best not to push the issue. “You have to tell them at some point.”

“Do I?” he asks sharply. “Do I? Does it matter that much? To you? To them?”

She frowns, a crease forming between carefully-drawn eyebrows. “They know about me. Why would they act differently for you?”

“It’s not-” He sighs, and turns his head. “It’s not about that. It just.. shouldn’t matter. And I’m not scared of what they’ll think. I’m _not_.”

“So what are you afraid of?” 

“Nothing at all.” Ryan smiles, or tries to, at least.

“So why won’t you-”

“Jack.” 

It’s frighteningly quiet- and _strained_ , like more words are stuck just behind his teeth. 

“Promise me you’ll tell them, Ryan.” She gets up to leave, rubbing just below her eye. “One day,” she pleads.

“One day,” he echoes hollowly. 

* * *

 

They’re in the middle of a heist, bullets raining, grenades lighting new paths through the grime of Los Santos, and Ryan finds himself breaking apart- breaking away, from everything.

There’s a memory that won’t let go of his hair.

_Bang_. One of his bullets finds its home in the chest of a police officer. _Bang_ , and suddenly he’s out in the middle of a field in Georgia on the fourth of July, wind whistling, fireworks cracking like whips in the stretching summer sky.

The world stops. It’s all so familiar.

His father is standing just behind him, and he’s back to being a child again, watching gold and white light burst and scatter so high above.

So high above. His father calls out a name, but it’s lost in the wind- the prairie yawns around them, a strong summer gale stealing all the noise but for the scream of the fireworks.

His father cups his hand around his mouth to shout the name again, and this time Ryan chooses not to hear it. The wind’s picking up now, damn near lifting him off the ground, and all he can think about is how much he wants to fly away.

Fly away. And everything is the same but somehow different, and the stars wink in morse code to him through the pitch and jet, spelling out warnings. He barely feels it when his father grabs him by the ponytail, but he still screams, a firework in himself.

_Let go of my hair._ Ryan isn’t sure if he’s shouting at his father or the memory itself, and then-

“RYAN!”

He turns his head and suddenly he’s back in the firefight, back in Los Santos, dazed. He’s not sure when he fell to his knees. Ray has him by the ponytail and the chest, barely supporting him, breathing so hard, gripping his rifle with white knuckles.

“Ray?” Ryan pants, weaker than he expected. “What-”

“There’s no time,” Ray spits, grabbing Ryan’s wrist. “Can you stand up?” 

“No- I don’t think so?”

Ray taps his earpiece. “Come on, _come on_ \- GUYS, WE NEED EVAC, NOW, FUCKING- RYAN’S BEEN SHOT, YOU FUCKS- I KNOW YOU’RE BUSY, GEOFF, BUT HE’S HURT.”

Ryan panics for a moment until he feels it, the wound, black spots clouding his vision. It’s on his right side, ragged and pounding and rust red. Ray’s holding his jacket against it, and the pressure is strangely calming through all of the clamor.

He resolves to staring at the sky, closed in by the apartment towers of Murietta Heights. The world is dulled and smoking and Ray is still shouting into the earpiece, voice cracking.

“Jack, Jack, what the fuck do I do- you’re the one who knows this shit- can you get Caleb on the line? They’re in Vice City? Okay, okay, yeah, but _what do I do_. Oh, _you’re_ busy? Yeah, I got a bleeding Vagabond here, Jack, please, I can’t get him out of here alone.” Ray is silent for a while, nodding, swallowing hard. “Okay. I’ll do that. Just make sure they get here as soon as possible. Thanks. Thanks, Jack.”

Ryan concentrates on the sky rather than the pain. He blinks and it’s indigo, ripped apart by the sparkling light of the fourth- and then he sighs, it’s back to that same polluted burnt yellow, smoke floating from careless bombs- Gavin or Michael’s doing, most likely- and no stars to be seen.

It’s a long, quiet while before he decides to sit up and he winces, blood pooling below him. He glances at Ray, who is still propping him up. He’s decidedly looking at the ground, face pale.

“Hey,” Ryan says quietly. “Gimme that.” He takes the now-sopping jacket from Ray’s hand and shoves it roughly against his wound. He lets out a tiny, heaving breath.

“You alright, man?” Ray asks, laughing shakily. “Hey, don’t worry. The b-team’ll be here soon, get you all patched up.”

“I-” Ryan winces as a jolt of pain runs up his side. “I still don’t really know what happened.”

Ray frowns. “You were spacey as fuck. You were barely shooting. Cop got you right under the rib and you went down. I took care of the rest of them.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Ryan decides not to visualize it. Instead, he thinks of fireworks and ponytails and secrets.

Seventeen aching minutes later, Jeremy and Trevor arrive with bandages and trembling smiles and a car with tinted windows. Ryan passes out in the backseat while Ray sits gingerly next to him, bloodied hands in his lap.

 

When they get to the safehouse, Geoff is wringing his hands. He pulls Ray aside as Trevor helps Ryan into a bedroom.

“What happened?”

Ray looks up at him with eyes weighed down with exhaustion. “The Vagabond fucked up. He just... stopped. In the middle of a fight. Like he fell apart.”

Jack is listening from the doorframe. She shakes her head and swears under her breath.

Geoff sighs.

* * *

 

“Wanna tell me what the hell happened out there?” Geoff asks the next morning, when everyone is packing up and Ryan is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his side.

Ryan looks up and grimaces. “Oh, no small talk? Right to the ‘what’s wrong with you’. No, I get it, it’s fine.”

“ _Ryan_ ,” Geoff mutters. “You’re my most valuable- fuck, you’re the best of us. We can’t have you spacing out in the middle of a heist again- we only just got away with our lives yesterday. We need you.  _I_ need you."

“Yeah,” Ryan says. “I know. I just-” He breaths in, and out, slow. “It’s hard to have seen the shit I’ve seen without... well...”

“Being a little fucked up,” Geoff finishes.

“Yeah.”

Geoff closes his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Just... be careful. I don’t think we can lose you like this again.”

Ryan nods and swallows the lump in his throat. Swallows his life story, again and again and again, as he’s always done.

There is so much he’s hidden from the crew. 

He’s not sure where the Vagabond stops and Ryan begins anymore.

* * *

 

Ryan loses himself in a memory again, but this time, thankfully, he’s not being shot at.

Actually, he’s washing the dishes- and then suddenly he’s back in that old rickety farmhouse, warm yellow washing over the kitchen and lighting up the dust bunnies dancing in the window frame.

He’s thirteen and sitting against the fridge with his head in his hands, fingers running through hair that’s too long and too tangled. It’s quiet. His father’s at work. 

He thinks about his body, and the shameful things he has done to it. He thinks of farmland, and how easy it would be to become nothing but soil.

He thinks of his father, and his fingers on her ponytail- _his_ ponytail. The sun shines, too bright, in his eyes, and it seems too light out to be crying. And yet, there he is, five foot three and blinking back hot tears over a damn name.

Out in those crushing wheat fields, it’s easy to lose yourself. Ryan is clinging to all he knows of freedom, still trapped in his own skin, his own bones.

He breathes deep, and sees the scissors lying on the kitchen counter. Pushing himself off the ground, he takes them in his hand and lets the blade skim over his palm.

That’s how his ponytail ends up on the floor. That’s how Ryan begins to store his emotion in shadows.

That’s how-

Ryan shakes his head, and then he’s back in his body, in his apartment in Los Santos, standing over two shattered plates.

He isn’t sure when he started crying.

* * *

 

It’s midnight and he’s shaking, a little, jittery- perhaps it’s the coffee, or perhaps it’s the secret shaking its way through his body. 

The crew is having a late-night all-hands heist planning session. Matt’s got all these new ideas, Geoff’s grinning wide, Kdin’s pitching in every piece of technical knowledge he’s got, Lindsay’s there to make sure everything is, well, humanly possible. Everyone is chatting and joking and buzzing in the energy of the room.

Ryan is silent as ever, but it’s a different sort of silence. It’s the silence that lies in wait- like the space between two people about to kiss for the first time, or the time before a bullet meets its mark.

It’s the silence that weighs down. He rubs his eyes and _suppresses_ \- like he’s done since the beginning. Since that night in the wheat fields. Since the _bang_ s stopped coming from fireworks and started coming from his hands.

He shivers a little in the air-con chill, and Ray looks over to him quizzically from his spot on the couch. 

“You alright, man?” he asks, frowning. 

Ryan shoves the memories away, tries to bury them in a smile. “Fine. Just a bullet wound in my side,” he snarks. 

Ray laughs then, and turns away. Ryan almost spills over, in that moment, that clear half-second where everything is peaceful, and then everyone goes back to the heist plans and he goes back to waiting.

The night passes slowly and it’s half past three when Gavin, three mojitos too drunk, starts bantering about what he calls the ‘official Fake AH Crew dick size hierarchy’, and Ryan is too tired to deal with this shit.

It’s not Gavin’s fault, really, he’s never had much of a filter anyway, and it’s not like he knows any better, but Ryan has to swallow his anger throughout the entire conversation.

“S-so, here’s how it is, right,” Gavin says, syrupy. “I reckon, biggest out of all of us- Ryan, s’gotta be. Then maybe Michael, eh? Or Jeremy? Because from what I hear, Lil’ J isn’t so bloody little. Ooh, maybe Matt, he’s fuckin’ weird and quiet, I bet he’s, like, thick, or something.”

“You give me too much credit,” Matt laughs. Jeremy smirks.

Ryan squirms in his seat and tries not to listen. Tries not to hear. Tries not to-

“Hey, what’s with Rye?” Michael says, smiling. “Got something to ‘fess about your dick?”

“Yeah, actually,” Ryan blurts out. The room falls silent but for Jack’s tiny snores- _no, Jack, you were supposed to be here for this, you were supposed to help me out-_

He takes a breath, and that’s the thing. The moment is not dramatic. The moment is not deadly or break-apart or poisonous. It’s just still. It’s just quiet.

“I’m trans.” 

He forces it out somehow, past the fist-sized lump in his throat, and it feels like the wind.  It feels like cutting his own hair with kitchen scissors.

It feels like nothing at all, just words, and it’s perfect. He looks at his feet and pretends not to hear Ray’s tiny gasp.

“Really?” Kdin asks finally, breaking the silence.

Ryan nods. 

Michael blinks. “Oh. Oh. Alright, then. Sorry. It was shitty to- to assume.”

“That’s fine,” Geoff says. “You’re fine.”

And that’s just it, really. Everyone nods and says small words of acceptance and smiles in a quiet sort of way and goes to sleep and it’s so _normal_.

 

And in that quiet space after a spilled confession, Ray sits down next to Ryan on the balcony to watch the dawn spread in its dusty orange over Los Santos.

“So you’re...?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Wow.”

“I guess.”

Ray shakes his head. “What really happened that day? When you... stopped. It was fucking scary, dude.”

“I guess I just froze,” Ryan admits. “I have... bad memories. They come back every so often. Bad timing.”

“So you have PTSD?” Ray asks.

“I guess?”

“Can’t blame you.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” says Ray. “Can I tell you something? Damn, this sunrise reminded me- this is a shitty fucking story, but it’s funny, bear with me okay? So I was with Michael, it was like five in the morning and we were...”

Ryan laughs, soft. As the story is told, he decides not to remember Ray covered in blood, but rather _this_ Ray, this boy with sunlight in his eyes, this boy who speaks like a biblical flood, never stopping for anything. The sun is peeking out in rays through the spaces between buildings, glittering orange against so many windows. And, suddenly, it feels as if nothing can touch him anymore.

He smiles, and Ray smiles back, and the moment feels like a firework in itself.

_Bang bang._


End file.
